Jim Reed's Blog, page 37
July 22, 2018
MONK AND DEEBIE SAVE ANOTHER CHILD
Listen to Jim’s blog:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/monkanddeebiesaveanotherchild.mp3
or read his tale below:
MONK AND DEEBIE SAVE ANOTHER CHILD
Monk and Deebie were my imaginary friends when I was a child.
I use the term “imaginary friends” as shorthand so you’ll know approximately what I’m talking about.
The truth is, Monk and Deebie were in no way imaginary. As any adult who ever had such companions will tell you, imaginary friends are very real, very solid, very three-dimensional and quite alive.
If you’ve ever had the privilege of living close to an imaginary friend, you know what I’m talking about. If you have never for a moment enjoyed the presence of an imaginary friend, then I can’t imagine how you got through childhood’s enormous obstacles in one piece.
Monk and Deebie lived with me in a world all their own, a world exactly contiguous to yours and mine.
This is not exactly a parallel universe, because both the universe of Monk and Deebie and the universe of you and me exist simultaneously in the same place. And, yes, two worlds can and do exist in the same location at the same moment, as any child can tell you.
Monk and Deebie were a fully adult couple, a middle-aged husband and wife who lived peacefully and with comfortable dignity in a small home that I could occupy at any time. They often joined my family for meals, and I often joined them in their home for meals and camaraderie.
Being the luckiest child alive, I was granted the most gentle and understanding real-life family you can imagine. My mother and father and sister took my childhood seriously. They never made fun of Monk and Deebie. They accepted me and my only friends. They set places at our little garage apartment kitchen table for this couple they could only see through my eyes.
My family and Monk and Deebie nurtured and supported me. As I said, I was the luckiest child alive.
The great thing about Monk and Deebie was they were exactly my size, even though they were grownups.
Monk always wore a nicely-tailored brown, double-breasted suit and tie and smoked a large cigar. Deebie was neatly attired in a 1940′s Sunday school dress complete with apron for working around their little kitchen.
One day, Monk and Deebie disappeared.
As a child full of energy and imagination and challenges at hand, I did not know they had packed up and moved on to support the next three-year-old shy kid who needed them. Later, I imagined that Monk and Deebie traveled around, helping one kid till things looked safe and stable, then leaving to help another…
Ever since childhood, now and then, I think about Monk and Deebie, my very first personal friends, friends who never let me down, never criticized me. Friends who to this day accept me the way I was and the way I am.
To this day, I am certain that if they ever decide to re-appear and visit me they will still be accepting and loving and as comfortably situated in my heart as they always were in their tiny living room when I was three of age.
I’ve discussed the concept of imaginary friends with adults who had them around when they were kids, and I’ve noticed that their imaginary friends were every bit as important to them as mine were to me. I don’t understand any of this at all. But you know, I’m not sure I want to understand or probe too deeply.
After all, what if Monk and Deebie return and find that I no longer believe in them?
What an embarrassment that would be.
Here’s hoping that you and Monk and Deebie are comfortable having a fine time remembering the good and disenfranchising the bad and just generally having a happy thought intrude itself on your existence once in a while in this real and imaginary life
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
July 15, 2018
AN INSTANCE OF HYPNOTIC METAL BALLOONS
Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/aninstanceofhypnoticmetalballoons.mp3
or read his story below:
AN INSTANCE OF HYPNOTIC METAL BALLOONS
*
Beneath the lifeless flat white glow of high-ceilinged flourescent tubes, a little girl is all alone inside the peopled store. To her, there is no-one else around. That’s because she is staring solely and wide-eyed at a display of metallic-hued helium-bloated balloons above her, balloons that wave to and fro, fro and to, in the dry conditioned air.
*
Her mouth agape in wonder, her head tilts upward. She marvels at the magically floating shapes and leaps a few inches, extending her arms to their limits, attempting mightily to grow tall enough to embrace and befriend the teasing lighter-than-air entities.
*
Her uninhibited laughter is all but ignored by clerks and shoppers who, after all, have more important and less joyful tasks to accomplish. Why would anyone pause to upward-gaze and relax just enough for a quick and painless injection of laughter?
*
Those who, here and there, do notice the childplay going on in plain view can’t help but grin and flash back to times when everything in life happened for the first time, every experience was new, every wonder was…well, wonderful.
*
Will the little girl retain this first-time memory in old age? Will she reach into her happy file in order to re-experience, re-remember, this special moment? Will the few Noticers in the store grin to themselves on the way home, reliving the most important moment of this day, the most important moments of their very own long-ago’s?
*
“Price check on aisle three!” an oblivious employee calls out.
*
And the day ticks forward
*
*
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
July 8, 2018
BORN TO BE MILD
Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/borntobemild.mp3
or read his diary entry below:
BORN TO BE MILD
a long-ago entry in my ancient Red Clay Diary…memories still fresh as greens…
The rusty pedal car I own when I am tiny and a wee bit young…somewhere along the way it disappears. Or I grow too large to occupy it. Or I graduate to tricycle and simply ignore those squeaky pedals that up till tricycle mean so much to me.
As predicted by everyone but me, even the tricycle is left kudzu-covered in the back yard when suddenly an old used bicycle comes upon me and I learn to unwobble my way to bikehood.
I haven’t mounted a bicycle for nearly six decades, but I can feel it beween my legs as if it is still here.
Here goes.
The free ride of a bicycle. Push of pedal. Turn of wheel. Press of brakes. Spokes & fastened bottle caps and rubber-bulbed horn and flickering battered headlight and reflector discs.
Flimsy wire basket up front. Pants cuffs tucked into high-pulled socks. Axle grease and narrow bent passenger-perch right behind. Fanny-piercing triangled seat and rubber-tipped anodized handlebars. High-ride bars versus cool-looking lowered bars.
And that moment of stasis when going uphill has to switch to walking & pushing.
Finding just the right hill to coast down in free-fall, hair-combing wind in my face, and stinging eyes and tooth-lodged insects. And sweatsweatsweat. And that strange sensation when I stop, dismount and feel the contrasting silence with its stunned density all around, in contrast to the movement, the movement.
How could any destination compare to this paused moment?
Then, anticipation hovers…the anticipation of the next ride, the next adventure, the next quest.
Then there’s the patch patch patch of used blown tires, the fear of theft thus chain and padlock. The certain feeling that there will never be another vehicle as freeing as this vehicle…the freedom ride to Somewhere Else, someplace different.
And, eventually, the notion that the trip goes only so far before it rounds itself into homeward bound.
Arriving back home to recount adventures to mother and siblings.
The comforting belief that the day will be complete once a homecooked meal beckons with fragrance and stomach grumble.
The starry late-night dreams snuggled under covers with me, the ever-young imagineering bike kid floating, floating abed.
Anticipating the sun and the dew and the next great trek
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
July 1, 2018
PRETTY BREEZE
Listen to Jim’s 3-minute blog:
https://redclaydiary.com/mp3/prettybreeze.mp3
or read his memory below…
A twenty-five-year-old page falls out of my red clay diary today.
This must have been who I was way, way back then…
PRETTY BREEZE
The fluffy gentle cotton blue and white frock floats in the breeze past the book shop window.
Contained therein is a young slim body topped with blonde long hair flowing flowing flowing in the June-cool Thursday morning.
Another day at the shop, and I the shop owner stand at the window affixing postage stamps and pressing them against the upper right-hand corners of envelopes.
Just the other day, a white sports car pulls up before the parking meter in front of the book store. Moving gracefully out of the driver’s side is another young woman dressed in high heels and short short dress, her stockingless legs evenly toned and steady on the pavement as she walks around the front of the car and bends down to open the passenger door.
Gently, she removes a small basket from the seat and just as gently carries it to the book shop door and enters.
I recognize her as a regular customer who, a few weeks before, was body-large with wedlockless child, the same child who now occupies the basket she totes. I am introduced to the infant Sidney, whose tiny feet and toes curl in silent slumber, oblivious to the old books and the old relic proprietor and the young exotic dancer who has decided to raise Sidney on her own. She is now back to dancing at Sammy’s Go-Go Lounge.
The customer beams at the basket and its contents, picks up the books I’ve been holding for her these last few weeks. She pulls forth a large roll of five-dollar bills.
The tab is fifty dollars, so now I am ten five-dollar-bills richer.
I watch as she carries her precious cargo to the car and drives away, then go about my business and file the experience away with all the other unusual and eccentric happenings of book shop life.
The infant Sidney is a living contact between me and my customer.
It occurs to me later that the five-dollar bills are probably equally personal objects, since they have most likely been received as tax-free tips during her performances.
I have a sense of personal contact with all my customers, though the interchanges are varied and vexing and joyful and sad, depending on what and when and where and how.
They are all part of my family, in a way. In a way.
Sometimes I feel that the act of opening a book and finding a pressed flower or a love letter or a four-leaf clover is just as personal an act as discovering a basketed infant or a folded five-dollar bill recently pressed against the skin of a young exotic dancer in the remains of a big city on a cool June morning
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
June 24, 2018
THE SKYWARD HAND SIGNAL AND THE DANDELION MEMOIR
Listen to Jim’s blog:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/skywardhandsignal.mp3
or read his memories below:
THE SKYWARD HAND SIGNAL AND THE DANDELION MEMOIR
On this particular day of hotness and elevated humidity, the driver of the westbound automobile dares to do something different. Obviating the dry coolness issuing forth from her air conditioner, she grasps the plastic knob of the anodized door handle and cranks it counter-clockwise. The window descends, massive heat rolls in.
Then, the driver extends her left arm into the sunny morning, right-angles her elbow so that extended fingers point skyward, and prepares for the right turn she intends to execute a few feet ahead.
Just a few yards behind her rear bumper is the front bumper of my vehicle, and behind that bumper is driver number two—me.
I am awed by this small vision, a vision of someone out of the past navigating the modern streets of Birmingham as if the previous fifty years have evaporated. The car is old and iron-solid, blinkerless and weighted down by time.
The woman ahead of me is neatly coiffed and Sunday-school-tailored. She seems to exist in her own orderly time zone, reminding me of earlier days when all drivers were required to provide solid and accurate hand signals so that tailgaters would know well in advance that a slow turn is in the offing.
This time traveler ahead of me triggers other memories I will have to deal with in future red clay diary entries…just to settle them back into place in extensive and dusty files.
Memories of helping my mother hang soggy fresh-washed garments on our backyard clothesline. Flashbacks of incredibly sweaty afternoons penduluming a swing blade to control the advance of tall weeds. Learning how to avoid stripping gears while attempting to navigate a stick shift VW Beetle.
Watching my aunts carefully flatten and wash aluminum foil so that it can be re-used—Waste Not being the operative term. Saving canceled bank checks so that they can be employed as play money in imaginary games and used as notepaper for grocery lists. Wiping dry dinner plates one by one as they are hand washed.
The careful practice of slow-dialing a heavy black telephone after making sure the party line is not in use. Opening a massive dictionary and experiencing the texture and sound of turning pages, then moving fingers down columns to find how many definitions apply to each and every entry. Picking a delicate dandelion and slowly blowing its fluffy seeds into the childhood air.
The Sunday school hand-signal woman disappears to the right, my memories are interrupted by speeding hornblowers and orange construction cones, daytime redefines itself so that I am back to Now, the hustle emerges, the step-by-step responsibilities of life intrude and brush aside all but the next thing and the next thing after the next thing
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
June 10, 2018
EVERY WHICH WAY BUT OVER YONDER
EVERY WHICH WAY BUT OVER YONDER
Quietly staring into space can get me into all sorts of situations, both sticky and problematic.
Indeed, calmly staring into space can transport me into the Wonderlands hidden away in my mind, can open me up to thoughts I never knew were lurking.
That’s why my pockets are filled with thoughts jotted down in haste–just in case I wish to retrieve them later.
Casting about car seat, sofa, ottoman, notebook, back pocket, desk drawer…casting here and there…I come up with a stack of inspirations, insights, nutty ideas, memories worth noting–ideas penciled and penned upon sticky notes, napkins, blank margins of torn newspapers, little spiral memo pads, backs of business cards, printer sheets…
Just for fun, just for reconciliation with my little Cosmos, I’d like to share a random sampling with you. Got a minute?
RANDOM ACTS OF SENTIENT SPASMS:
From Carl Sandburg:
“I’m an optimist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”
*
From braindroppings of Jim Reed:
*
“Filling time is about all we do, whether or not we actually do anything.”
*
”Time is ephemeral but strangely real–no other unit of measure makes as much sense.”
*
“One task of the writer is to record all the disappearing reference points.”
*
“I seem to be the last Me standing.”
*
“As I have traversed all these years, with myself as traveling companion, having never deserted Me, isn’t it about time i made friends with Me?”
*
“How many years will it take for you to become the person you always were?”
*
“I can’t get very far without my body.”
*
“What it is possible for me to become is beneath my hopes.”
*
“I seem to rely upon other people to make me feel bad. Why can’t I just feel bad on my own?”
*
“I believe in special moments and the disconnected interstices that come between them.”
*
“The flash of inspiration is the only truth, the only beauty, worth recording.”
*
“To pay appropriate homage to life it is important to thank Goodness whenever possible. Thank Goodness!”
*
And here’s one from a couple of thousand years ago:
*
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” –Lao Tzu
*
There, there. Was that so painful? Thanks for looking over these random thoughts of harmlessness.
*
Now, go forth and jot down those oodles of epiphanies that course through you.
*
To get through the miasma of our days, we need all the inspiration we can possibly muster
*
*
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
May 27, 2018
THE INVETERATE VERTEBRATE AND ALL THINGS CONSIDERATE
Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/theinveteratevertebrate.mp3
or read on….
THE INVETERATE VERTEBRATE AND ALL THINGS CONSIDERATE
I’m getting to be a habit with me.
Actually, I’m beginning to realize how much habit and ritual govern most daily activities.
This is actually not such a bad thing.
For instance, habit and ritual free up the mind, help me focus on more important things, expend my time on thoughty thoughts and considerate acts of kindness.
If I had to arise each morn and re-learn how to use brush and paste, so much of the clock would be wasted. Instead of spending twenty minutes examining the toothbrushing instruction manual and trying to decipher its line drawings, I can depend on body memory. Without even consciously trying, my teeth become cleansed and minty while my mind focuses on much more important things.
Things like the possible meanings of life, the purpose of existence, the motives of neighbors, the infractions of traffickers, the ills of the world, the wonders of fond memories. Things like that.
Of course, habit and inveterate attitudes can stifle the mind, too. Particularly if I let go and allow habit and inveterateness run the show. Particularly if I laze about and allow all original inspirations and aspirations to enter the sinkhole of speedbumpiness.
Guess the rule of thumb is, don’t allow lethargy to rule everything—being in the control seat beats being yanked about by puppet masters awaiting their chance.
Would I prefer being a nervous tic or a nervy tick? At least the tic indicates that I am sentient and aware. The tick just sucks away, bloats, then ceases to exist.
Habit and routine free me up to concentrate on projects and projections and promises of better things.
So, I’d best be about the business of concretizing the best of what good is left within me, dissolving the useless and meaningless negativities that flit about like gnats….spreading the word that each of us can Matter if we just decide to
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
May 20, 2018
CHANGING THINGS TO KEEP THEM FROM CHANGING
Listen to Jim’s podcast story:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/changingthingstokeepthemfromchanging.mp3
or read on…
CHANGING THINGS TO KEEP THEM FROM CHANGING
Most mornings of my life are astoundingly similar.
Even though each day is new and filled with discovery, chocked full of wonder and challenge, grimace and grin…each day is remarkably like each previous day.
I skim my right hand down the wrought iron banister of homefront, left hand swinging bag and baggage of stuff to take to work. Upon the sidewalk or lawn or atop a bush is the morning paper, all snuggled up inside a clear sleeve, freshly pecked at by dew-dropped critters.
I pick up the package with now-freed right hand, stuff it under left arm, pull open the gate of our white picket fence. Only the gate does not want to open—I’m stating this as if the gate has free will and consciousness. Can gates decide whether to open?
On dry, rainless mornings, the gate swings free. Given an hour or two of precipitation, the wood expands just enough to make it stick. Grumbling and forcible exit follow.
Later in the day, at the shop, the tall wooden front door, itself a victim of humidity, groans and creaks quite loudly and hauntingly. This makes me grin and feel right at home. It causes customers to laugh or register alarm or give me free advice about how to fix creaking doors or preach to me about how I should get that thing fixed. Some customers even rush back to the door and force it closed in order to silence it.
I pretty much react the same each time, “You know, if that door ever stopped making that great sound, I would rig it to play a recording of the noise whenever opened. It has become part of the shop’s ambience.”
I make this statement just to test the customer’s flexibility of attitude. Usually, the effect is, the customer looks again at the creaking door, relaxes and laughs, gives up worrying about something beyond all personal control, and decides to embrace the shop and its idiosyncracies…thus returning to browsing and rumination.
The stubborn gate and protesting door serve to snap me out of my doldrums, force me to chuckle or snipe, jump-start me into the day’s activities, be they excruciatingly routine or off-balancing wondrous.
One of my favorite books is The Leopard. One of my favorite quotes from the book sticks with me and guides me to this day, making me appreciate sameness and change with equal zeal
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
–Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
May 13, 2018
THE ENTRANCE TO ENTRANCEMENT
THE ENTRANCE TO ENTRANCEMENT
One particular customer at the old bookshop is wandering about, mouth agape, eyes wide with wonder, joy writ across her face.
She has never seen anything quite like this—a cathedral of fragrant old books and artifacts going back 500 years in time and issuing forth to her present day.
Are such disparate time periods and objects meant to abut and overlap and inform one another? She asks this of herself.
The customer then elevates her arms from waist to eye level, spreads hands wide, palms facing forward. It’s as if she is gently pushing at the looking glass, preparing to enter a world unknown until this moment. How will she get back? she wonders.
She has no idea anyone is observing her, which may demonstrate that she is indeed tumbling momentarily into the pleasurable comfort of childhood recollections.
It takes her some extended period of time to adjust to the fact that in a world as entrancing as this, she may never feel fully informed, but, ironically, she at some inner level feels totally at home.
It is as if childhood remains intact, deep within her, prepared to be remembered and cherished when called upon.
As she wanders about, an actual real-life present-day boychild sprawls on the floor of the old bookshop, casting about for some beckoning book cover to energize him into upright attention-span.
It happens. The right book about another boychild and his imaginary tiger friend pops into view. He is suddenly alert and, page-turning on the green carpet, transfixed into yet another imaginary world where things make a bit more sense.
Elsewhere in the aisles, a young couple delights in browsing and snuggling, giggling and chatting about this literary thought and that literary thought. They are happy and in love with both books and each other, unable to separate the two realities.
The old bookdealer just observes and smiles and feels proud that, ages ago, he fell headlong into ownership of this emporium, an emporium where dreams and realities truly appreciate one another, truly live in harmony
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
May 5, 2018
WRITING ALOUD AND TALKING SILENTLY
WRITING ALOUD AND TALKING SILENTLY
How do you write aloud? How do you talk silently?
I might actually have the answers to these two questions.
For instance, my early training centered around the task of writing words as if they were being spoken. For instance, the phrase “Your NPR station” looks fine—as is—on a sheet of paper or a screen. If I were copy writer, I might dash off “Your NPR station” and hand it to the cold-read radio announcer to be uttered in dulcet toned Southernese.
*
Unfortunately, I have perhaps not taken time to test this phrase to see how the listener will ingest it. Thus, it comes out, “Urine Pee-er Station,” which throws a certain percentage of listeners into a state of confusion. Or produces a passel of giggles. Or fails utterly to communicate at all. One person only hears something about Urine or about a station designated for urination—wouldn’t that be a restroom? Another might stop listening to figure out why the redundancy—urine pee. Another would snort at the word Pee and ask why the vulgar usage, when urination is the correct and proper word. Even another might wonder what the meaning of the technical term “your in pr’s tays yun” might mean.
*
It’s all potentially distracting, this multimeaninged string of syllables. In the old days, I would be assigned the duties of a re-write man and attempt to fix this, such as, “This broadcast comes to you from the National Public Radio Network, of which WBHM is a member.” Clumsier but clearer, since lots of folks do not know what NPR stands for or even what WBHM means.
*
So, writing aloud is not as simple as it seems. I guess that is one half of my original point.
*
The other question is, How do you talk silently?
*
I walk into a store and see a bold sign near the front, NO EATING ON SALES FLOOR. The author obviously feels strongly about this all-CAP phrase and feels that its silent message is quite loud. And clear.
*
NO EATING ON SALES FLOOR. Well, who would do that? Eat on the floor, I mean.
*
What am I to do, actually go scrounging for a plate from which to eat, assuming the floor is not clean enough to eat off of? What kind of unsanitary place is this? Can’t the floors be sanitized?
*
There must be a better way to sort this out and make clear what is intended. But that would require effort.
*
Damn, things always require effort, don’t they?
*
Maybe I should stop obsessing over things like this and sit quietly, watching a Public Television program
*
But then, you know what happens next. The announcer says the show is brought to me by Viewer Sly Cue.
*
Who is this person, Viewer Sly Cue? Why is he trying to mess with my head?
*
I need a nap
*
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
Jim Reed's Blog
- Jim Reed's profile
- 1 follower
